


How the Piper Played

by mellish



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Autumn, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Gen, Memory Loss, Musicians, Post-Book(s), fairytales - Freeform, looking for that happy ending, somewhat very happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellish/pseuds/mellish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year later, Tom thinks about how he and Polly are still caught between somewhere and nowhere; how it's pretty much all his fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Piper Played

**Author's Note:**

  * For [llassah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/gifts).



i.

He’s been somewhere for the last few weeks, and the idea of it – the distance, the never knowing when, the maybe-even-never – is making Tom feel lost. Not an alien feeling – hasn’t been, since his brother sold him out and he first saw Laurel’s sweetly poisonous smile, saw the strange pale glimmer in her eyes – but he’s supposed to be a free man now, and celebrating that fact. Instead, he screws up the second movement of his solo part repeatedly, so that Ann has to voice what they’re all thinking and say: “This isn’t working right now, guys. Let’s call it a night.”

“Day,” Ed interjects, shooting a look at the clock, which is showing a traitorous half past four. “What’s wrong, bud?”

 _Nothing’s wrong_ , he wants to reply, exasperated, but that’s a lie. And he could never quite manage lying to these three. But it’s even harder to say that when he closes his eyes and pictures her frowning at him, telling him not to be so meek; when sometimes he imagines the feel of her hair, beautiful and bright, almost a living thing when grasped in his hands. How he still has nightmares about the transparent pool, Morton rising up from it to grab at his foot and drag him down; how he wakes whispering her name but never shouting it, for fear of who might be listening. _We’ve got Nowhere_ , she said, the last time they met. _We just have to find it more often._

“Drinks,” he says instead, shaking his head. “I’ll pay. It’s my fault we can’t make it through this piece, anyway.”

ii.

Polly’s granny’s house was, oddly enough, a nowhere space. She welcomed them in with a minimum of disbelief when they showed up at her door, he and Polly still damp, Leslie still with red-rimmed eyes. “This is where we celebrate, hmm?” Miss Whittaker said, almost wryly. Polly laughed and shook her head as she showed them into the kitchen – a triumphant laugh, a merry one, but he caught the edges of fatigue around it, and he knew that Miss Whittaker had, too. 

Something twisted in his gut – the memory of her voice, clear and certain as she said _I never want to see you again!_ She had meant it, too. Partly because of Laurel, and Laurel was always thorough; he knew that better than anyone else in this room. But it was partly him, too – how the two of them fit together, wrapped up in something so complicated both of them could only barely understand it. Still, he couldn’t wonder about it long because Mintchoc sidled up to him and rubbed her head against his leg, meowing piteously.

“So I guess you really are free, now,” Miss Whittaker said, bending down to scoop Mintchoc away, despite the cat’s faint protests. “I always knew Polly would turn out to be better than any of us.”

He tried not to think of how sorrowful she looked when she said that. He knew more than anyone that there was no way he could have slipped out of the bargain that easily. He knew more than anyone that Polly deserved better.

iii.

He still loves her, though. That’s probably the worst part of this whole affair – the fact of it, and the fact that it’s probably never going to change. He remembers realizing it – or maybe admitting it to himself for the first time, anyway – in Australia. They were on a cruise winding its way through Sydney harbor, the weather temperate even if the wind made his scarf flap violently. The concert had been a success; everyone was kind of drunk, and he was starting to seriously contemplate living here forever. It didn’t matter if Laurel could be anywhere she wanted; the fact that Australia was so far away would mean that she would menace him less often, at least. Besides, what benefit could there possibly be to staying so close to Hunsdon House? It wasn’t like he had all the time in the world left to enjoy; may as well make the most of it by traveling.  
  
The answer and his denial happened in the same stream of thought, and he found himself growing hot involuntarily, agonized over the _idea_ – but certain that it only proved how painfully true it was. The sudden longing to see her was so strong it dissipated all his cheer, the alcohol muddling his mind only moments before vanishing away, replaced by cutting clarity: _you knew this would happen_. Had known it would, since he asked her, like an idiot, how to do make-believe in the first place. Then he realized she had seen the pool as well, which meant she was not only Hero, she could also be _his_ hero. The excuse he had made not to believe it, at the time, was that she was only ten.

 _That didn’t stop you, did it?_ Something in him asked, and he frowned. After a moment’s hesitation, he found himself returning to the open bar and demanding the strongest whiskey the bartender could find.

iv.

“So what you’re really saying is that you liked me since I was twelve? I find that hard to believe.”

Polly’s spring break happens to coincide with a gap in the quartet’s schedule, and Tom is hoping that the coincidence _means_ something. He picks her up from her flat with a new set of secondhand books he has been saving to share – his customary offering, the alternative to chocolates or flowers. Polly takes the package from him and he counts three long heartbeats before she leans in to kiss him quickly on the lips. Anyone who saw might have guessed that she was being concerned about what her flatmate would think, or being too showy in front of passersby, but they both know better. Still, Polly has always been bold that way – declaring herself Janet, refusing to lose.

“I wasn’t exactly happy to be falling in love with a teenager.” He stops, wrinkles his forehead at her over his tea. “Not even. And you wanted to call me _Uncle Tom!_ How do you think that made me feel?”

Polly laughs, her eyes closing, shoulders shaking slightly. She covers her mouth and says, “You were just so tall. And divorce was something that happened to people’s parents, not their friends.”

“Oh, were we friends?” he says, but he’s laughing, too; he wants to reach over and grab her hand and laugh and laugh. Instead he drinks more tea. They drove around in circles before settling on this shop, reasonably obscure enough to be a nowhere space. There were two vases framing the steps outside; he noted them briefly before pushing the door open.

“I don’t even know what I would have called us, then,” Polly answers, suddenly thoughtful. “I just knew whenever I got a letter from you I felt like – like nothing else mattered.”

He understood that feeling, because he had felt the same way standing on the platform, Morton Leroy too close for comfort but instantly nowhere at all when he grasped Polly’s shoulder and squashed her face against his anorak, the movement so spontaneous that he was already pushing her towards the train before he had even registered what happened. The crowded station had melted away, and there was nothing but the feel of her slight shoulder through her oversized coat, the sudden haphazard thought of _I don’t want her to go._

“When did you stop calling me Mr. Lynn?” he asks, instead, because the feeling is returning even if they’ve got the rest of the afternoon left.

“Probably when I realized that if I saw you with Mary Fields one more time I was going to explode,” she confesses, slicing briskly into her cinnamon roll. “Or maybe it was around the time I got pissed off at you for bruising my fragile writer’s ego - but it was only because you were right. Why _were_ you so hard on my writing, anyway?”

“Because I knew you could do better,” Tom says, but does not say, _and because I loved you even then_.

v.

Forgetting her had been a dull ache, a discomfort; the emptiness he was inexplicably filled with left him mostly in a mild state of depression, though he couldn’t think of any reasons why. He could _guess_ – and even then he had been completely sure that this sadness was all Laurel’s doing – but he was starting to be preoccupied with his impending doom, and anyway, he was busy. Busy recording CDs. Busy touring. Busy practicing. Busily playing for some spectral passion, and he had no idea who the notes came out for, but it seemed like every time his cello hummed to life his heart was breaking into pieces. And it hurt because he couldn’t think _why._

Or maybe he didn’t want to think why.

(At the funeral, he hadn’t been able to tell her anything but goodbye, and when he bent down to kiss her cheek she moved her head wrong – it was all involuntary, of course – and he kissed her lips instead, wove his fingers in her hair and kissed her and wished he didn’t have to stop, but – who was she?)

Each of them dropped in, by turns, while he was recording his solo CD. Ed and Sam listened thoughtfully, then went over the potential jacket covers when the session was over, snickering.  
  
“I didn’t want to _pose_ ,” Tom sighed. “I told them to put some kind of artwork instead, or maybe a picture of the composer, but they’re not having it.”

“Maybe because they know your face would sell more copies?” Ed suggested. Sam ribbed him, but he was grinning too.

Ann was different when she came over, too late to catch him before starting, so that he had to finish the piece before he could go out and greet her. When he opened the door outside the recording room she was seated with her eyes closed, like she was still listening to something, though at the sound of his footsteps she turned to look at him. “That was great,” she said. “Already perfect. That has to be one of the tracks.”  
  
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know how much they’ll let me pick, but I’ll remember your comment.”

Ann ignored the jacket covers arranged on the table across from them and said, “Everything all right?” Because Ann could see clearly, like that; they all had superpowers (he could no longer remember where that notion came from, but he knew it to be true), and Ann’s gift was memory, but she also has a knack for seeing things in Tom that he couldn’t even see himself. It was times like that when he realized that Laurel was one point between Ann and him, a strange reminder of how far her power reached, but Ann left the family long ago. It was easier for women than men, and her mother had some sway that those adopted – like Tom – never did.  
  
“Why do you ask?” Tom said, that alien sorrow swelling up again inside him. There was a name tied into this. There was a memory – a series of memories – and he couldn’t dig them up.

“I knew it. You’re not all right.” Worry sank into Ann’s face. Tom loved her in that moment, the same way he always had, the way he loved Ed and Sam – the quartet was another home for him, the one way out before he had no more exits. The one thing that still gave him life. The only thing? _Not_ , he was startled to find himself thinking.  
  
“I’m missing something, aren’t I,” he said. “Or I’ve missed something. That’s it, isn’t it, Ann?”  
  
She shook her head. “I can’t remember, Tom.” If even Ann couldn’t remember, then there’s no way he would. He was in love with someone – that was pretty obvious – and it wasn’t Ann because he loved her in a different way. It wasn’t Mary, either – he ended that some time ago, feeling cool and empty when he did. He felt Laurel’s hand behind everything again, a spell rubbing his mind clean, her little tinkling laugh his elegy. But what did Laurel do? And to who?

  
“It’s been two months since you broke up with that Mary Fields, right? I thought that was it,” Ann confessed. She didn’t seem to believe what she was saying, either, but it was easier that way. They eyed each other uneasily.  
  
“I’ll be fine,” Tom lied.

vi.

It’s different now. He’s _happy_ now, most of the time, and that sense of doom hanging over his head has mostly dissipated, and it’s only when he can’t see Polly for too long that he starts wondering if it’s all fake, still. Not all of it is curses and magic. There’s real life in there, too. Polly doesn’t talk about school much, but he always remembers the fact that she has a career to come; a whole life to live, apart from him. (As it should be.) In another two years she’ll be graduating, though he gets the feeling she’ll keep on studying after university. He also knows she’s still writing, though she hasn’t shown him any manuscripts.

He’s back in London for the next two weeks, doing another solo recording – just three songs for Christmas, only three months away. It’s strange to think that this time, last year, he had been steeling himself to die on Halloween. It hadn’t worked completely, and it reached its breaking point when that strange girl sat across from him on the train and kept telling him things he couldn’t understand. And that whole time he’d felt the pain in his chest surging, tearing into him even as he tried to ignore her, until her name had slipped, unbidden, out of his mouth – relief and agony in one syllable.

Because he’s nearby, he comes to see her nearly every day. It’s too much to hope that her apartment isn’t somewhere, but there are a few parks in the area that they can go to. They walk around or sit on benches, inspecting the trees beginning to show their autumn colors. He tells her about the concept of the new recording, about what the quartet has been getting up to these days, and how they miss her and all want to go out for drinks sometime. She tells him about Fiona’s newest boyfriend, an Italian this time, whom she’s tutoring English.

The word _boyfriend_ makes Tom feel kind of uneasy, not least because it makes him remember Seb. He had known that Seb was engaged to somebody; it was a useless bit of information, something the family chatted about amicably whenever they had a reunion. Laurel had mentioned that she disliked Seb’s girlfriend a few times, but Tom hadn’t cared at all. Now that he knew it was Polly, and that they had been together at least three years, he couldn’t help wondering how many times Seb had kissed Polly; or what she had been thinking, when she said yes to his proposal. And it definitely couldn’t have been only Seb, who’d kissed Polly, who’d fallen in love with her smile and wit and fearlessness.

He deserved it, he knew, because of Mary Fields and Laurel and the freezing Polly off, even as he kept hoping that she’d see through it and save him. He knows he deserves it, so he tries not to think about it, but Polly – is too attractive by half. For that reason alone it’s probably a good thing that they didn’t seen each other the last few years. Polly has grown up; although she must have turned out the way she did partly because of him, the fact that she is now twenty isn’t entirely lost on him.

“I always wondered,” he muses, while they’re sitting on a bench eating hot waffles they bought from a cart, “why you had to be so beautiful.”  
  
Polly rolls her eyes, knowing it’s not really a compliment. “I don’t really want to hear that from you. _She_ did pick you, after all.” She munches her waffle, leaning her head against Tom’s shoulder. Her legs are hitched up on the bench, and the sunlight peeking through the leaves casts interesting shapes on her boots. “Well, I didn’t notice until Fiona told me. You always called yourself a turtle, so when we hadn’t met in a long time I would imagine you as a turtle.”

It’s his turn to laugh, and when he’s done he puts an arm around her and pulls her in closer. She arranges herself so that her head is tucked under his chin. It doesn’t matter where they are right now. She’s his, and for the few moments they stay huddled together on the bench, that’s the only thing he needs.

vii.

Laurel had come for him after the accident at the carnival, not even a day after Mary left. “Tom,” she cooed. “You need care. Come back home for a bit. You’re not fit to stay there by yourself.”

He didn’t say no, not that time, though it took an incredible amount of willpower not to say, _that place isn’t my home anymore_. _It never was_. If she asked, there had been enough other spectators at the carnival that maybe he could lie about Polly being there in the first place. It had been a stupid risk to take, just the same, but it had _almost_ worth it – _almost_ – when Polly showed up, fifteen, not even bothering to hide that she was looking at him even if Mary was latched onto his arm. He had invited Mary on purpose. He had steeled himself to talk to Polly as little as possible, but _still_ – in her jeans and white top, taller and more beautiful than he had ever seen her, he knew it was a mistake to invite her.

Still, it was Mary who stayed over the last few days. He hoped that would be enough to distract Laurel.

The thing about Laurel was that he _knew_ she was beautiful, knew that under any other circumstances he would have appreciated that beauty, too – been pleased, to be adored by it. But he had never once been attracted to Laurel. It might have been the circumstances under which he came to her – a blur which he could hardly remember himself. At the time, he had thought it was his musical talent, and he was flattered by the attention heaped on him, glad of the luxury he suddenly seemed able to afford – but it was a sham, and Laurel was the worst sham of all.

“My dear Tom,” Laurel said when he arrived, pulling him into a tight embrace. She made a distressed sound when she peeled off his shirt that evening, before pressing her lips to his shoulder blade. But he saw her face in the mirror, and she was smiling widely, delighted with his still-fresh scars.

viii.

They argue, of course. This never was a fairytale, and Tom knows it’s a personality thing, how they’re both stubborn, a little broken and wild. That shouldn’t make them a good fit, and there are times when it really feels like they don’t make sense together.  
  
“I hate that way you have of shutting people up,” Polly murmurs, brows furrowed. It’s not supposed to be like this. Not this close to Christmas; not when they can scarcely scrabble the time to be together, as things are. He’s leaving for Europe in four days, and Polly had mentioned an application for study abroad in Scotland the following term; it’s a tentative movement away, he knows. Maybe she’s trying to see if the distance will change things, now that they’re no longer tied to each other except by choice. By the fact that they, somehow, still want each other.

“I don’t mean to,” Tom answers. He doesn’t even know when he’s doing it. It must come from having grown up fenced in by too many lies, being adored one second and then treated like trash the next. A life spent being whispered about, with disdain, until he tried to crawl out of that warped place and made something of himself; right around the same time that a girl grabbed his hand and showed him life _was_ possible. “I’m sorry,” he adds, and means it. The arguments are always stupid; it was the study abroad this time, and he knows he’s not being entirely fair, but he’s still not sure what Laurel’s up to, what kind of revenge she’s plotting.

Polly’s frown has turned mostly from angry to upset, and she seems to be trying to hide this fact by looking at the clock. “You should go,” she says at last. And then, a little bit hastily, “I’ll come see you at the airport before you leave.”

“No, I’ll be back tomorrow,” he answers, suddenly in a panic. He flicks through the schedule in his head. “Actually, not tomorrow. But I’m free the day after.”

Polly smiles up at him then, making eye contact at last, and Tom finds himself helplessly smiling back. She stands, briskly, and brings her cup over to the kitchen counter. They’re at Fiona’s cousin’s not-often-lived-in flat today, a place Polly happened to learn about by chance, where she and Fiona sometimes studied when they desperately needed silence. It was perfect for that, because it was mostly empty.

“I’m going to knit you a lime green anorak for winter,” Polly murmurs over the sound of water turning hot in the boiler. “It might turn out atrocious, but please promise me you’ll wear it on tour.”

“And I’ll get you E.B. White’s _Elements of Style_ ,” Tom answers dryly, plucking his scarf off the back of his chair and winding it around his neck. He pauses once it’s wrapped completely, watching Polly from behind as she digs through the box of instant tea for a flavor she likes – peppermint, maybe, or earl gray. Before he can stop himself he strides across the room and rests both hands on her shoulders, kisses the top of her head tenderly. He feels her shoulders hitch beneath his palms; hears her say, clearly without meaning to, “ _Tom_.”

“Yup,” he says, heart crumbling, the way it always does. “I’d better go. See you soon.”

She turns before he can back away and swiftly stands up on tiptoe, but she only manages the kiss because he tips his head down and lets her, arms wrapping around her back to draw her in closer. They’re both a little breathless when they pull away, but he finds himself grateful for it. He doesn’t want to leave with Polly upset. He doesn’t want to leave, period. She puts a hand up to his cheek and leaves it there, and it’s warm from the teacup.

“See you soon. Somewhere,” she whispers, a tiny smile on her face. She drops her hand and picks up her cup of tea. Tom grins all the way to the door.

ix.

At the New Year party where Ed was forcibly shaved by a rowdy crowd of inebriated musicians, Tom found himself considering his chances for survival. They were slim, to be sure, and there was so much mystery and magic knotted up into everything that he still doubted most of it was real, but suddenly there seemed to be a _chance_ for things to be different. The only problem was – and this was a _real_ problem – his chance was an eleven-year-old girl whom he was starting to get very attached to. He loved Polly’s letters and he loved the story they were writing together, and something about the steely look in her pale eyes told him that she had terrible parents but that wasn’t going to change a thing; she was still going to grow up to be a formidable woman.

Ann stumbled out into the garden, gasping for fresh air. She caught sight of Tom and came over, a big grin on her face. “Oh my god,” she breathed out. “They really did it. It’s all gone. Thank god.” She slid onto the platform next to him, swatting absently at the leaves that surrounded them. “All right, Tom?”

“Fine,” he answered, and, “Except for the part where I think I’m turning into a bastard.”

There was a thoughtful pause, in which Ann absently hummed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, before saying, with surprising clarity, “You could never be a bastard, Tom. And I know you never do things without a reason.”

Ann knew him well, but that was still too much of an extravagant statement. Tom was about to plunge ahead and keep communicating with Polly, hoping against hope, even if it meant wrapping her up in family matters. _But I haven’t done anything yet,_ he found himself thinking, the act of someone with a guilty conscience. _I can just be Polly’s friend, that’s all. She needs a friend right now._

“You just want to live a little, don’t you?” Anne asked, jolting him back to reality. She sounded not-drunk, then, her eyes intent on Tom while he thought about how to answer. Was it even all right for him to say _yes?_ “Hey Tom,” she continued. “You deserve to be happy, too.”

x.

“So let’s hear it then,” Polly says, cool as a cucumber on her chair.

“We haven’t practiced much,” Tom begins apologetically, and Ed says, “Oh stuff it, Tom, it sounds great and you know it.” Tom shoots him a dirty look. Sam shows Polly the _okay_ sign, and Ann shakes her head, laughing without noise. _Is this real_ , Tom finds himself wondering – _is this possible, that I’m in a room with my four most favorite people in the world, about to do the thing I love best in the world? Is this actually happening?_

“And – three,” Ed says, and starts the introduction. Instinctively, everything melts away in light of the tune Tom begins playing, the notes coming to him clear and certain, without him having to coax them out of anywhere. It’s like the music itself makes a road for him, spinning the way through, the dynamics, the quick fingering required, guiding him to a place where he can be anyone, be anywhere. He soars through the trills and sweeps past the low notes and it’s one clear unbroken sky, one vision shared by four people. 

There’s a break where Ann plays by herself for eight measures and he opens his eyes, looks across the room automatically. His gaze falls on Polly, whose eyes were closed until then, but in that instant she opens them too. She catches his glance, grins, mouths _I love you_.

They don’t say it very often at all – as a way of being mutually careful, but also because, even after all this time, they’re still not _that_ kind of hopelessly romantic couple. He told her what he thought about sentimentality, after all – but even he has to admit, what does it matter, when the words are true? They haven’t figured out everything yet, but there is time enough. Polly won them that time, and Tom is going to cherish her so as not to squander it. He smiles back at her. Holds her gaze as he puts his bow to the strings and plays.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving me a chance to write about Tom and Polly. I really enjoyed rereading this book - it's a real genius piece of writing. Hope you enjoyed, and Merry Christmas!


End file.
